Mon 27/02-2012 Day 182

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What is this orange huge float?

Pos: here
Loc: Isla van der Meulen
Acc: tent
Dist: 56,6 km
Start: 7:35 End: 18:40

It was a great campsite! But only with earplugs all night…there was some kind of woodpecker birds or frogs or whatever making a pecking noise all night – nice, but not for sleeping! But no problem, earplugs and the ability to use them properly are a traveler’s essential equipment.

It was a dead day. Dead calm water, dead clouds handing low with drizzling light rain, and deadly boring…at least the first half of the day, where I was paddling way offshore kind of mid-channel, as hugging the coast made no sense. Not a single boat today, besides a dead old rusty wreck, and not a single whale, but I spotted two dead ones :-((

The wreck was on the other side of the channel, but clearly visible! It must be sitting on a rock or a shallow area, as it is still clearly to be recognised as a boat.

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Quite a huge guy!

The first dead whale I saw from the distance only – a long, light orange spot, almost looking like an over sized stranded kayak. At that point I couldn’t figure out what it was, and paddling closer was too much effort. Later in the day I saw a similar colour object close to the rocky wall in a bay, and I was to be paddling past anyway. Still no idea what it might be – an upturned boat? A really strange color light orange rock? A big log? I came closer, and it was clearly floating, about 10 meters long…obviously a dead whale…he or probably “she” was floating upside down, displaying a huge female looking body opening. It was pretty fresh, no idea how the carcass is going to rot or be eaten by the vultures over the time. But it was smelling already…that’s the turn of life…

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Another dead whale...

Later I saw a bunch of similar sized rocks, giving me the idea the whale may be petrified over the years 🙂 – in Australia, I saw whale cadavers in all stages on the beaches, from freshly stranded to bones only. At one village beach, the people tried to cut the body with a chainsaw to be able to use a forklift to get the stinky thing away from their village beach…

The low hanging clouds were right in the middle of the mountains, wrapping them in white loose bands – it looked actually quite pretty! They were not moving a tiny bit today! Not that I’d be complaining about too easy paddling conditions…

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Is that a sea otter?

I saw a small animal we call in Germany “Wiesel”, kind of a mixture between rat and cat – it came very curious just close to me while I was standing on a rock peeing – it obviously never has seen a woman peeing standing up! Well, thank goodness for my “Freshette” (www.freshette.com). This one works comfortable and safely, none of the other products on the market do (no, they didn’t sponsor me…)! Don’t try the soft rubber one (unsafe), or there is a long slim one (it hurts) or whatever! Through my male pee zipper I can use it even staying seated in my kayak. An essential skill as a single female kayaker paddling in a dry suit! I’m just hoping I’ll never slip off a rock with an open pee zipper – same bad luck as if a wave washes into your cockpit when you are doing the job in the kayak… 🙂

It was a bit of an effort to find a suitable campsite tonight, eventually I camped on a yucky beach with lots of sea weed and rubbish, just about making a single level bed on reasonably clean rocks. The whole beach is close to steep rocky walls, and really marginal. One tent edge sits on a huge log, the other side is sloping down. Fortunately it’s very low tide tonight, so I’ll stay dry here. The next chance would have been 6 km away, and it was already 7.30 pm…It’s a dark dirty black hole, compared to last night’s sunny white clean beach! Well, matching the “dead” day…

3 comments on “Mon 27/02-2012 Day 182

Currin

Hi Freya, Beautifully funny…! I am in Dunedin, NZ and am doing research on Adventure, will go to mainland China for data collection. Have been following your ventures and enjoying your descriptions and explanations. Cheers, Currin

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